BanglaCricket Article

Expectations are looming high among the Bangladeshi cricket fans. Whenever the cricketers are playing against Pakistan, the hope of a repeat act of world cup 1999 grows rapidly.

1st Test Preview: Are They Up For It?

by F Waliullah

Published: 19th August, 2003

Expectations are looming high among the Bangladeshi cricket fans. Whenever the cricketers are playing against Pakistan, the hope of a repeat act of world cup 1999 grows rapidly.

But are they up for it? The players in Australia have promised to a part of the crowd that they will achieve a victory on Pakistan tour.

However, past performance and statistics suggest otherwise. A proper combination of players in one day and test cricket has not been found yet, the captain is under pressure to perform on this tour, only two players among fifteen have performed creditably in the last tour of Australia.

Only one light of hope is that the new coach Dave Whatmore will try his best to do an honest job - and he will look into it that his players do the same. He has told his players to make individual improvements.

Tomorrow, Bangladesh's first test will start in Pakistan. These two teams will be facing each other for the forth time in test match cricket inside three years. And yet, so many new players in both teams!

Only about six Bangladeshi players have faced the Pakistan side before. They are - Javed Omar, Habibul Bashar, Khaled Mashud, Khaled Mahmud, Monjurul Islam, Sanwar Hossain and a couple of other players who played against Pakistan here and there like Mohammad Ashraful and Tushar Imran to name a few.

With so many new players coming in to both the teams like Hannan Sarkar and Alok Kapali for Bangladesh and Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Sami for Pakistan, nobody can guess exactly what is going to happen.

There is no disagreement to the fact that the difference between cricket infrastructure of these two teams is so huge that Pakistan always will have an upperhand being the favorites to win both the one day and the test series.

It is upto our boys to prove it that they are capable of playing test cricket and they are capable of defeating other teams, which has become a rare thing these days. It is also upto them to prove that they belong out there in the field instead of their former colleagues and veterans Akram Khan, Aminul Islam, and Minhazul Abedin.

It is time to replace them - properly so that their names are only mentioned to remember the past glorious days of Bangladesh Cricket rather than to compare those great names with the current team.